Over the past couple of days I’ve read posts from people who have been battling with all kinds of things. Cancer. Depression. Divorce. Forgiveness. Despair. Redundancy. Each one completely different, but each a challenge that takes up complete focus and energy merely to survive.

I’ve read about one or two who have “lost the battle” with cancer – and for them I weep. But I also remember two members of my own family, each of whom were eventually taken out by the dread disease, but each of whom saw a decade or so of high-quality, high-adventure life in remission first. And I also think of more than a few friends who now live in ongoing remission, who have passed the magic “ten year” mark, and for whom the doom-laden threat fades a little more with every passing year.

I can remember extreme grief for a couple of people I know whose lives were diminished, and eventually ended, by forms of depression. But I also rejoice in the growing hope of many more who have lived long enough with the black dog to learn how to keep it at heel; inspirational people who live, not without their demons, but nontheless in hope and not in despair.

I share with many the ongoing journey of life marked by daily, deliberate, repeated forgiveness. The only way to survive the awful inhumanities that people visit upon each other is to learn to let go: to make our peace with the circumstances that halved or quartered our health or security; to cut adrift those who assasinated our marriages, our careers, or our self-esteem; to live day by day in the knowledge that life consists in celebrating what is, and ceasing to regret what never will be.

Yesterday my son and I – who together have weathered a few battles of our own – watched War Horse. It’s a movie that imperfectly translates a book to the screen, but despite imperfections still makes a story live. The beauty of the story is that instead of dissolving into mere happy endings, it draws out of life a sense of triumph over adversity. It walks agonisingly through the trenches of war, but instead of thoughtlessly wiping away the scars, it proclaims that life goes on.

New Year’s Resolutions often take on a kind of fantasy shape: that of pretending that all in the garden is rosy, that we can simply remake our lives and wave away the scars of the battles we have survived, and whose memories still haunt our dreams. What can we do that is better? To launch into a New Year we need to let go. That’s not to say we don’t remain cognisant of what we have lived through. But we can wear our fading scars without shame, and without letting them keep us in the trenches we have already survived. We have mourned our losses, and we will do so again. But if we have survived thus far, let’s hear the call to live, with joy and celebration, while life endures.